This obviously very inspiring personality to the left here is Lord Bichard. He is a genuine, fully paid-up Sir Humphrey – a career mandarin. Bichard was a permanent secretary in Whitehall, until his retirement at the age of 53 in 2001. His entire career has been spent in local Government and Whitehall as a civil servant, and then among the fat-cat quangoistas. He is one of the lucky recipients of a scam whereby circa 16,000 of his ilk had their pension entitlement doubled….but nobody was told, and thus there is no budget to fund it. Lord Bichard’s index-linked pension is in excess of £120,000 per annum. Last night, this man told the BBC that retired people should be encouraged to do community work….or face losing some of their pension.

While the official government estimate of public sector pension liabilities is £530 billion, an estimate using more realistic assumptions than the government would be £1,025 billion. This sum is over 80 per cent of GDP and over twice the size of the official national debt. These commitments must be honoured by government, and thus pension liabilities should be regarded in the same way as the official national debt. What’s more, each year the Government makes £41 billion of new pension commitments. These are funded by you and me at twice the rate required for employers in the private sector.

The figures for Mandarin pension liabilities (about which I’ve blogged endlessly – see link above from 2010) are deliberately understated, because by ‘government’ in this case, what we mean is Sir Humphreys . There are really only five lumps of income, spend, and liability that matter when it comes to sorting out Britain’s problems: our trade balance, civil service waste & overmanning, the welfare system, 2008 bank bailouts, and public sector pensions applied to local government and Whitehall civil servants.

Now along comes Lord Bichard with this to say from the comfort of his State-feathered nest:

“Imaginative ideas are needed to meet the cost of an ageing society. It is quite possible, for example, to envisage a world where civil society is making a greater contribution to the care of the very old, and older people who are not very old could be making a useful contribution to civil society in that respect, if they were given some incentive or some recognition for doing so. We are now prepared to say to people who are not looking for work, if you don’t look for work you don’t get benefits, so if you are old and you are not contributing in some way or another maybe there is some penalty attached to that. Are we using all of the incentives at our disposal to encourage older people not just to be a negative burden on the state but actually be a positive part of society?”

I have myself encountered young people (and comment threaders at The Slog) who would support this hypocritical and muddled view of the retired. And like some kind of robotically covetous leveller, Bichard goes on to point out that “the transfer of wealth in this country from the young to the old is one of the highest in Europe”.

Bichard’s ‘imaginative ideas’ represent some of the worst apples=pears analyses I’ve encountered in a long time.

For starters, wealth is primarily concerned with assets, not income. Old people have had sixty years to build them up, young people ten. And it isn’t a transfer of wealth at all: it’s a simple reflection of the 1946-48 baby boom coming through to retirement.

No Lord Bichard, the stats say it all: the real transfer of wealth in this country has been from the middle class wealth producers to the elite: from the Squeezed Middle to the bankers and senior civil servants who between them (a) account for 64% of all Britain’s national debt liabilities and (b) have screwed up everything they were given to do.

Next, look at his Birtesque comparison of people without work (thanks largely to government overspends, bank losses, a daft economic balance and neocon drivel) with the retired. Here I am aged 64 – declaring an interest – with a 100% self-funded private pension. In the last twelve years I have seen this drawn-down, market-exposed pot and a small capital sum saved over the years (1) reduce by 60% thanks to QE (2) lose 90% of its income thanks to Zirp (3) have the drawn-down income capped by the DSS and (4) offer the lowest annuity rates in living memory.

Most older people have paid taxes all their lives on income, taxes on their pension savings, and now pay taxes on their pension income. I become entitled to the State pension next February – and that too will be taxed at the rate applicable when one adds my private pension.

Lord Bichard is 100% cushioned from the four factors squeezing me, and millions like me. But he can’t resist poking a fat functionary’s head over the parapet to tell the peasants it’s time to work harder…otherwise we might have to throw you on the fire.

This is Lord Bichard getting over-excited about something.

And let’s face it, his noble Peerness has had a rollercoaster of a life with some stunning judgements to his name.

While serving as the ghastly David Blunkett’s PermSec, for example, he at one point intervened personally to ensure that details of an affair that Blunkett was conducting with his Private Secretary should not become public. Nothing like a bit of open Government, eh?

He has consistently voted in the Lords for greater EU integration.

In 1990, he was appointed CEO of the Benefits Agency with a brief to ‘deliver an active modern social security service, which encourages and enables independence and aims to pay the right money at the right time’. It didn’t do any of these things, and in 2001 it was folded into the Job Centres.

From 1995 to 2001 he ran the merged Education & Employment departments, presiding over an appalling record of dumbed-down standards and risible employee training – plus, of course, a spurt in the numbers of pinstripes he employed. On his watch, the Learning & Skills Council quango was born and, sadly, allowed to live. It was thrown on the 2011 bonfire, and all its functions transferred to local government – along with all the pen-pushers who worked there.

After his retirement on full pension aged 53 in September 2001, Bichard was appointed Chairman of The Design Council. Another nice little Quango-stipend, but why? Apart from designing things that didn’t work, WTF has he ever had to do with Design in this country?

In his spare time, he carried on ensuring that the interests and emoluments of his Class would be protected: he remained a vice-President of the Local Government Association, and a Director of the Institute of Government. (This latter is basically a manual for senior Mandarins wishing to learn how to more fully manipulate their Ministers, and hide things from the public.)

A man who, all his life – from age five into free education and thence on to University with a free grant and then 30 years in the Useless Brigade with a free pension followed by quango-troughing – had everything at the expense of the taxpayer, now wants to tell the rest of us that we get far too many freebies, and nothing is for nothing any more. “Just be sure to close the gate after me” and all that.

There is, when you think about it, an obvious reason why the Lord Bichards and Bob Diamonds of this world are responsible for two-thirds of the debt liability run up by Britain since 1990: they share exactly the same brand of arrogant insouciance, within which it’s not just important that they come first: everyone else must come equal last.

One could fit a brass neck on a rampaging rhinoceros, and get more sensitivity than these people emit. For myself, I think Lord Bichard should take some of his own medicine. And the social contribution I recommend for this very lucky, unproductive man is for him to retrain as a plumber (thanks to his education ideas, you can never find one anyway) and then use his new skills to go to the homes of struggling pensioners….there to stick his head down the lavatory, while the occupant flushes the chain.

There really needs to be some sort of cap on civil service pensions, it makes you sick. Talking of sick, my nhs pension of ooh £4000 when I get to 60 will be on the chopping block before that bastard has a penny taken off his.
It is monstrous.

I’m no fan of state employees’ pensions, but we do need to be a bit careful with the figures. The number you quote is the NPV of the the state pension payments. That needs to be set against the NPV of the income of the state, discounted over the same period. In other words, set one year’s cost against one year’s income, or all years’ costs against all years’ incomes. You will find the results rather less dramatic, though still excessive.

I think it’s good that these people are given the oxygen of publicity to air their warped view of things, the more people hear about these twats the more they are going to turn against them. The ‘grey vote’ is a very powerful one probably enough to put one party in power all on it’s own, and as I keep saying, if UKIP does get somewhere, they are not subject to Whitehall’s leverage, they could turf the lot of them out with impunity.

I agree. We ‘greys’ need to ensure more and more people hear his views and similar views held by others of his ilk. To those of us who have worked for 40 years and found time to participate in our communities on a voluntary basis while paying for Baron *rse-holes like Bichard, his views are deeply offensive.

The old have paid everything demanded of them for decades, now it appears that for all those years governments of all hue were lying through their teeth about it being sufficient to provide for old age. Forgive me if I didn’t know that, neither I bet did you. So how is that the fault of the bleeding old?

@ zoompad.
All good fun poke fun at the, so called Pratts of the upper class. But and it is a big but, they got there without being too stupid and most have hung to their wealth for centuries. While we the Plebs have just laught at these comedy sketches.
Check out the Bio of Monty Python & co most are from Oxbridge. Talk about cake and circuses.

“Apart from designing things that didn’t work, WTF has he ever had to do with Design in this country?”

JW, Don’t forget that as soon as Michael Bichard ‘Retired’ on full pension in Sept 2001 he became ‘Fully Employed’ again as Rector of the University of the Arts London from Sept 2001 until August 2008, as well as being Chairman of the Arts Council. I would have to observe that I really don’t think much comprehension of Art or Design rubbed off on him whilst in command of a very creative Art College environment, during his tenure !

Please can we also add ‘Moonlighting’ for the Soham Enquiry from January to June 2004 whilst STILL in Full Time Employment as Rector of the University of the Arts ?……..I assume that he must have invoiced a bob or two for running writing that report?

He always was such a busy chap, and yet almost invisable…somewhere between a shadowy figure and ‘something of the night !’

….One last point is that if, as a retired Lecturer, I was ever invited back to any Uni in the UK to do a few days guest teaching, I have to report it to Teachers Pensions, so that they can take deductions in the light of my additional income…………I wonder if that rule also works for the ‘Great and the Good’ ?

People like this should be hanged from the balconies of their ivory towers as a warning to those who follow them.

While a nation requires government, such a government should be run for the benefit of the nation – not for the personal aggrandisement of those in whom the nation has placed their collective trust.

There is a storm coming in this land and I think the elite believed that they can hide behind the police and the army if things go udders-up, But those two pillars of order have been persistently kicked in the knackers over the last few years, and I doubt they have the presence or the will to put up much resistance. Expect to see a sharp rise in G4S taking over greater law and order responsibilities – regardless of the Olympic debaclé.

I am beginning to think that the so called ‘doomsday preppers’ are not so mad after all.

John, good that you highlight this issue. One thing I would recommend though is a different rhetorical approach. If you really want to get people to notice this issue, you need to spell out what fraction of government expenditure is wasted on these inflated pensions. Then propose a levelling of the playing field and show how this would alter the imbalances in the state finances.

So this guy retires early, let’s say he has 75% of the years of contribution needed for a full pension. Then let’s cap any civil service pension at say 40k /annum. So he only gets 30k/annum, from 65 onwards, or a reduced amount from an earlier point, if he wants. Say we expect people to live for 20 years after retirement at 65, so if he wants to dig in the pot 10 years early, then he can get the same total over a longer period, so about 2/3rds of the 30k/annum, or 20 k/annum. Seems like a fair system to me.

If you can then calculate how this would affect government expenditure you could show that the austerity cuts needed can be achieved by shafting these parasites. I fully understand that this in a non-trivial exercise. Any sloggers out there with the time and skills to help John with this?

You’e quite right David.
I tried this calculation when I ran the 2010 pce. Back then I think it worked out at a £2m pension pot per head.
The other stunning stat is that a mere 16,000 of the bastards account for 25% of the ‘unbudgeted’ amount. It must have been perpetrated at the highest level – around 2006, just as Broooon began to relaise what was going to hit.
About the time he was never planning to have an election for which the local party circulars had already been printed.

I don’t follow the pension pot logic here, these pensions are paid out of tax receipts or borrowing on an ongoing basis. There is no pot to pay them from, it’s straight from our pockets. So then taking your numbers, assuming things average out there are about 20,000 of them getting 100k per annum. That’s 2e4 * 1e5 = 2e9, 2 billion per annum for their upkeep. That’s quite a fair bit of cash, but still peanuts compared to the 500 billion or so of total government expenditure (of which about 92 Billion goes on pensions).

What I propose is that if someone can deliver the stats on how many ex-civil servants are on which band of pension, grouped in say 5k bands, then we could calculate what the effect of a cap would be. I’d assume the 16,000 Sir Humphreys of which John speaks are only the tip of an iceberg. So say:
…
95-100 k/annum 9,700
100-105 k/annum 5,600
105-110 k/annum 4,200
…

What’s baffling to me, is that surely this guy owns his home. So what does he find to spend 120k / annum on? How much does a pensioner that owns their own home need to live a decent life?

Either the vast overwhelming majority of the population of this planet is going to be plundered into poverty and servitude by these blood-sucking vampires. Or these monstrously greedy and self-interested disgraceful examples of human DEvolution are going to meet an appropriately karmic demise.

The universe will always seek balance. It demands it. Nothing would exist without balance. This is a basic and fundamental law of our reality. Every action has an equal and opposite reaction. Cause and effect. Proven by science. Poeticised in philosophy. If the pendulum swings one way, it must always swing back the other way.
The current state of affairs are monumentally unbalanced in favour of the very few. Do you believe these few have the power to change the laws of reality? Do you really believe they can stop that pendulum from swinging back? With their “money”?
You don’t have to have faith in a god or a religion or a philosophy or a branch of science. Just have faith in REALITY. Don’t believe this is how things are going to remain.

I agree, things will certainly change, it’s the method that brings about the change that could be the issue. I think that nothing short of bloody revolution is going to change anything, they are not going to take their snouts out of the trough willingly, are they?

I might be too ideological, possibly pink and fluffy and hippy about this… I will admit to that, but I just don’t think a guillotine in trafalqar square and retribution is the answer. I have a fear that it would diminish our humanity and perpetuate this bullshit. We need to rise above the practises of the past. Change the record. If we are to make progress.

I do like the idea of a quarantined inescapable island where they are all herded and forced to sort it out amongst themselves. Lets see them quantitatively ease themselves out of their.

Spiller, the only guillotine that is required is the one to restrict all public service/poiticians pensions to £40k per annum. Seems eminently reasonable to me. If they restricted pay offs to that amount too, the deficit would soon disappear.

The moral of the story is apparently to stash your loot in a galaxy far, far away from the thieving hands of the likes of Bichard.

Ran in inquiry into the Soham murders, did he? Another day, more paedophilia. I thought inquiries into murders were the job of the police. The purpose of an official inquiry, as we now know, is to obfuscate. Bit of a red flag. So what was there to obsure in this case, I wonder?

How wonderful for this stupid, stupid man to have been able to retire in his fifties, and with all that cash. I officially retired at 63, went back to work until I was 65, doing 24 hour shifts caring for the elderly, no pun intended, but plenty meant, how are these idiots allowed to make these idiotic comments, he lives such a privilaged life, he should be made to live the life of real life pensioner who has to turn the heat off in winter just to be able to feed themselves. Please get to grips with the real world m’ lord, of stupidity.

The saying, “Do as i say, Not as i do” applies here.
Bear in mind All MP’s, Local Councillors get a pension of 1/30 of the Salary or Councillor Allowance when they reach 65 for every year in office, [Councillors for the past 5years only]
But a good article John, one that you won’t find on MSM even if you sent it to them.
As to what we shall do about it? moan on this type of blogg, down at the local with your mates, at the wife or maybe just kick the dog/cat and then go back to sleep.

“As to what we shall do about it? moan on this type of blogg, down at the local with your mates, at the wife or maybe just kick the dog/cat and then go back to sleep.”

Yes, but by blogging and moaning we disseminate. I expect the majority of readers on this blog, and many like it, are, like myself, disillusioned, post-40 somethingers, who are constantly berated by their friends and better halfs for being grumpy old (wo)men.

But I am finding that the moaning is slowly percolating down into the discussions of the younger generations. And while I think that most young’uns lack the capacity to form cogent sentences (I’m an old bigot too) they do have the ability to translate the information into yoof-speek and disseminate it via facebook or twitter or the like.

If anyone, it will be the younger generations who will bring about change.

We are the seeds that were planted generations ago and who have slowly crept towards the surface to bring new life into the world. Once the seedling has broken through and seen the light our task is done.

Wasn’t it T.Bliar who brought in pay for local councillors? Were they always? paid, I always thought not, that they did this duty out of concern for their community, & were simply allowed to claim expenses.

They used to claim per meeting and expenses that’s why quite a few went in had their names taken and excused themselves to go to another meeting and possibly even another one and do the same. It was such a problem the gov decided to pay them all an allowance, basic plus extra for extra responsibilities. Until quite recently I didn’t know they had their snouts in the pension trough as well!

The government is about to sharply reduce future pensions of the Armed Forces. Might this not be a good time to get the DM or DT to start a campaign against the outrageous deal that the Sir Humphries have?

There is a new zoological classification for this type of individual: Homo Rictus Ridiculous. Together they form Antisocial Remuneration Scheme Embezzlers and meet every Turdsday at the Sphinx and Sphincter. The descriptor ‘ treacherous and merciless’ is not a myth.

Thanks. I assure you it is born out of genuine despair – and the certain knowledge that my power to change any of this sh*t ends at my fingertips. The same goes for everyone, but together we are mighty!

It’s a pity that there’s an entry in Wikipedia for this guy, while the detailed info should be in Uncyclopedia.
IMHO, a Hall of Shame should be created, in or aside of The Slog, for noted personalities like the one described here.

I’ve been reeding (mispell intentional) Fred for years……….’the sage’ has an interesting view on things (likewise generally a bolloookz deconstructor) but if you haven’t been there before, make sure you go through his ‘policing section’ also. It is eminently enlightening :)

“there to stick his head down the lavatory, while the occupant flushes the chain.”

With an increasingly fashionable, and in this case aptly named, ‘back to the wall’ pan this could work. However, with only 6 litres of flush available due to the Water Supply (Water Fittings) Regulations 1999, some extra impetus may be required to finish the job, as it were. If we could just find a few (thousand) volunteers to piss into the cistern and provide a longer flush, I feel that this minor technical impediment could be overcome.

The total irony of the man. The outcome of his Soham enquiry input is the whole Crimal Records Check apparatus, which is a major deterent to volunteering for community involvement, by young and old alike.

Add that to legistaltion that puts upper age limits on roles like company director, magistrate etc, and the continued threat to take older drivers off the road, and the opportunity to participate is shrunk considerably.

We note that Sir Norman Bettison, Chief Constable of West Yorkshire, has finally concluded that, in order to secure his pension properly, he must resign with immediate effect today – allegedly on account of all the Hillsborough ‘truth’ emerging.

Just wonder if he had a view on the Jimmy Savile cover-up too ? Or even a role in it from that location ?

Thanks.and maybe you should know that I did not make this suggestion and do not believe pensioners should have to work.I asked some questions of witnesses at a select committee.that has been misrepresented on the BBC website which I very much regret.

The matter of non contributory state pensions will come to a head when the country’s economy finally admits that it has crashed, that’s at about QE7. Then there will be a hell of a row and all state pensions (inter alia) will be standardised at an affordable level. Which may be rather low. Grades, final salaries, special one-off contributions, years of service, political connections will all be irrelevant.

Look I’m not a Brit so your going to have to explain this slowly to me. I came across Bichard’s ‘new idea’ article and looked for dissent. The comments were absurd, suggesting the new idea as a new idea to be considered. Bichard is peerage, the new idea is as old as the peerage itself. It is about slavery, it is about neo-nazism, plain and simple. Why were the commenters actually thinking it was a worthy idea to be bandied about? Why didn’t they express outrage at the very idea of it? The absurdity of it was trial ballooned which is why comments were even allowed. Demographic politics is pure evil, are the peerage so desperate they simply can’t fathom the economy and the politics is finished?

When you listen to people like this, you may or may not despise them but it becomes more obvious the basic state pension does not support a person anymore. FACT!

When some “hooray henry” like Lord Bichard starts speaking the implication of what he says actually make interesting reading. A bit like Lord Turner saying we have never had it so good implying econmically it is not going to get any better anytime soon in fact probably far worse. FACT!

So are there any more people who perceive themselves to be of higher worth who would like to share their comments? Us mere lessor people actually learn alot from what you say and can establish facts from this.

I have come across this appalling man several times in my life unfortunately. He never stays anywhere too long, creates chaos, moves on, and leaves others to clear up the shambles. It angers me that he is a lord, he has no conception ot the real world in which most of us live. Strip all his titles from him and make him do some grass roots voluntary work- he may learn alittle about people and life

The pensions office told me when I reached 60 three years ago that my state pension would be £90+ per week. As I could not even rent a room for that money in london where i was living at the time, i realised I would need to keep on working till I dropped.

If I had taken the pension and had to work for that money would this not be effectively employing me below the minimum wage? Government gangmasters rule, yeah!

I think it’s a
disgusting idea once more proposed by someone who, no doubt, has a very large
pension and independent means.

I am one of the “younger pensioners” – if such a
catagory exists and I care for my 90 year old parents , both of whom have
severe senile dementia but refuse state help, they may well have reached an
advanced age but their quality of life is zilch! just what is the point?
perhaps this nincumpoop would prefer to introduce euthanasia so that the
unprofitable are no longer a burden on society!

And now he suggests that I work for “doing
nothing” does this man have no idea of the amount of unpaid work carers
like my self undertake in our society? he might like to consider that the next
time he sips claret at his club!

This is outrageous that any civil servant can retire on anything but the most basic state pension.As the author if this article states they have been the cause of catastrophic blunders that have downgraded this country.
He should have had the common sense to keep quiet but alas the arrogance of office has not been lost on him, perhaps he should donate his pension to the state?
After all as a Lord he hath privilege enough hath he not?

after reading his brilliant buttered on both sides career i wonder how my Lord has the gaul to even utter anything as he has done nothing to talk about and has sat on that many quangoes i bet he has had a heck of a JOB to survey his domain while he has diaried in that many lunch appointments with wine of course that by the afternoon it was probably feet up along with huge yawns while he pondered the time of when his packed in working day ended.(ps) been there seen it done it .